Motivating Underrepresented Students to Pursue Faculty Roles

Abstract

Increasing the number of underrepresented nurses in healthcare has the potential to facilitate the provision of culturally competent care, which, in turn, increases healthcare access for diverse patients. To increase diversity in the nursing workforce, educational programs need to recruit and retain underrepresented students. Underrepresented students will more likely be attracted to a program where there are underrepresented faculty. However, there are not enough diverse graduate students in the pipeline to increase faculty diversity. In response to this need, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and American Academy of Colleges of Nursing developed the New Careers in Nursing (NCIN) program to increase underrepresented students in accelerated bachelor’s and master’s programs with the longterm goal of NCIN students choosing faculty roles and increasing faculty diversity. Through the NCIN program, my university was able to provide scholarships, a mentoring initiative, and leadership development for second bachelordegree students. As a result, our underrepresented student enrollment quadrupled, with zero attrition and a 100% graduation rate. These outcomes indicated that we successfully achieved the majority of the goals of the NCIN program. The question that remained was: Did our successful underrepresented students see themselves as future faculty? The processes of recruiting and retaining underrepresented students into graduate programs, transitioning from graduate school into academia, and mentoring novice minority faculty have been recommended as steps to increasing underrepresented faculty. The absence of minority faculty role models decreases student aspirations and can affect opportunities for student-faculty connections, which may impede student engagement, professional socialization, and program progression. The lack of minority faculty may indicate to students that nursing does not value diversity, which may deter further education and limit the pipeline of nurses with advanced degrees. To assess what would encourage our underrepresented second bachelor-degree students to pursue the faculty role, a qualitative study was undertaken. Using a qualitative descriptive design, a convenience sample of 7 of 10 students of African American descent from a cohort of 60 second bachelor-degree students was selected. While underrepresented students were defined as individuals from minority backgrounds, study participants were all of African descent. After institutional review board approval was obtained, students were contacted by phone and signed an informed consent, acknowledging that their participation in the study was voluntary. After training a peer honor student, she conducted individual 30to 45-minute semistructured interviews guided by 3 questions designed to elicit participant perceptions of the (1) benefits, (2) barriers, and (3) motivators to pursuing a faculty role. Privacy was protected by securing data in a locked drawer in a locked office. Anonymity was maintained by referring to alphanumeric codes on the interview data and field notes. Data were analyzed by inductive content analysis. Trustworthiness of the findings was established by several readings as well as 2 participants validating data and reviewing results with a research expert.